I was after two photographs from this partial lunar eclipse. Firstly, I wanted to capture a close-up of the moon suspended in a star field. Secondly, I wanted to attempt a wide-angle shot that would capture both the unfolding eclipse and the nearby Milky Way. Both represented a technical challenge due to the wide dynamic range involved. The two results are shown below.
Last week I was at a meeting in Aussois about an upcoming spectrograph for the VLT called MUSE (which stands for Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer). Members of the consortium met to share the latest developments and update each other on various aspects of the instrument. It was my first time in Aussois, an incredibly beautiful small town in the Rhône-Alpes region in South East France. We were lucky with the weather and managed to go on a nice (if quite tough) mountain hike. These are some of the pictures snapped during
Hello folks! It’s been a while since I posted something here. Currently I’m fairly busy happily hopping from one side of the island (of Gozo) to the other shooting a short film. (Yes, that’s right, I’m trying my hand at moving pictures). This photo is a still from tonight while I was getting some footage for the said film. It was taken at about 3am from home. I wonder how many of you looked up and noticed the splendid view of the moon, Jupiter and the Pleiades lying fairly close to
Here goes my best attempt yet at capturing the Milky Way Galaxy from home in Gozo, Malta. It’s an image that took a couple of hours to get right in camera, and many more were spent in painstaking post-processing to reveal all the subtle detail that lay hidden within the image. It is definitely one of the pictures I am most happy with and proud of. Can’t wait to make a large print of this one! (Click here to view how the Milky Way looks from the site where I captured
This is a quick snapshot of the very centre of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, taken from Malta. Since we ourselves lie in the Galaxy, we cannot see its grand spiral design from our point of view, just as we cannot perceive the Earth’s spherical shape whilst being bound to its surface. So in essence, this picture shows the point of view of a citizen of the Milky Way. Enjoy!
I presume that last Saturday, at about 3am local (Maltese) time, most people were fast asleep, unaware of a magnificent spectacle going on above their heads. Jupiter and its moons slowly disappeared from the skies, as our own moon glided steadily in front of them, thus occulting the Jovian system, starting with icy Europa and and volcanic Io, then Jupiter itself, and finally large, rocky Ganymede and heavily cratered Callisto. Of course, the surface features of these moons are not visible with small ground-based telescopes; instead they appear as tiny dots
Here are a few pictures from a workshop held last week in Oxford, which saw some of the leading scientists working on the next generation of instruments and telescopes converging in one place to discuss the latest developments. The workshop was made possible by the generous support of Philip Wetton. The inaugural Philip Wetton lecture, associated with the workshop, was delivered this year by the Wetton Professor Roger Davies.
Here is a series of pictures of the transit of Venus, snapped from Port Meadow in Oxford early this morning. There was a huge patch of cloud right where the sun was rising – and I was sure that I was not going to see a thing. But then, luckily the clouds cleared for a brief moment, a bird decided to grace the sky, and here is the picture. I am happy to say that I’ve managed to observe both Venus transits of the century!
Anyone who looks up at the evening sky over the coming days will see a bright gem shining brilliantly in the West. But this is no star. It’s actually the planet Venus (aptly known as the “Evening Star” or the “Star of the West”) which is currently dazzling us every evening as its dense atmosphere reflects back light from the sun. But this evening was even more special as Venus moved across the open star cluster commonly known as the Pleiades. It was an event that reminded me of the brilliant
On Saturday, 21st January, Oxford Astrophysics held the event “Stargazing Oxford” as part of the BBC’s Stargazing LIVE string of events across the country. It was an occasion that brought together the whole of Astrophysics at Oxford (and many people from the Physics department at large) to bring astronomy to the general public. The hugely successful event saw about 1,200 people attending, which makes you think that the particle physicists were quite right when they said that astronomers have it easy when it comes to public outreach! But joking aside, I
So, right now I’m situated at more Southern latitudes. To be more precise, I’m on an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea called Ischia (which lies just off Naples) for an international conference on ELTs (Extremely Large Telescopes). If you are interested in the subject matter of the conference itself, then click here.
